Organizations have created a wealth of electronic information over the recent years that relates to their customer transactions. This information is continually reorganized, linked to other information, and analyzed by the organizations in an attempt to improve customer relationships and increase revenue via customized marketing campaigns.
One technique for increasing revenue includes developing a customer segment population using a given set of search criteria that is designed to capture the desired population. Conventionally, a business analyst, who is knowledgeable and responsible for a particular customer segment, will develop the search criteria. The criteria are then passed to a search specialist (programmer) for developing and implementing an executable search that embodies the search criteria.
The business analyst executes the search and receives results back from a data warehouse, and the results include unique customer identifications. These customer identifications define the business analyst's customer segment population for a desired marketing campaign. The marketing campaign is designed by the business analyst to increase the organization's revenue for goods or services.
The entire search generation process is time consuming and expensive because search specialists are generally coveted organizational resources that are expensive and have limited availability. As a result, business analysts will submit search query requests that are often placed in a search specialist's work queue and are often not timely addressed. During this time lag, a business analyst may find that market conditions have changed and that the original search query request is no longer needed or is now irrelevant in view of the elapsed time. Additionally, the business analyst may have developed several other search query requests for other marketing campaigns and may have added those requests to the search specialist's work queue.
Therefore, there is a need to eliminate the dependency of search specialists, such that business analysts can generate their own search queries in an immediate and timelier manner.